Who can convince me that he's not just the next Bush?

As a relatively disgusted Republican in a time where an all time low percentage of Americans are calling themselves Republicans or Democrats, I cannot understand is why most of the candidates seem to be trying to project the idea that their administration would just continue business as usual by using the same trite talking points that are supposed to appeal to “the base.”  Do we really want virtually every word out of the candidates mouths to illustrate how they would torture more terrorists harder and longer than the other candidates, go to war with Iran the soonest, keep our families safe those dangerous homosexuals lurking in the bushes, or “protect” the most “babies” by banning promising stem-cell research?  Does the ultra-religious, Falwellian right really have that much of a stranglehold over the political process?  Is this really the message that the country wants?

The one reason I’m still at least nominally a Republican is fiscal conservatism.  Republicans beat that drum often and hard while Democrats seem to soundly reject it.  However, the problem is that, as effective as they've been at making sure that high school kids don't learn about contraception or raising a stink over Terry Schiavo, Republicans have been just as effective at increasing spending and bureaucracy – mainly through the vehicles of the Department of Homeland Security and Iraq.  I think that the government can easily do more with less yet, since Republicans took Congress in 1994 and Bush took the White House in 2000, I’ve not seen evidence that their rhetoric lines up with their overall voting record.

Can we get a candidate who doesn’t want to push to make his religious “ethics” national law and will defer to the states on these issues?  Can we have a candidate who really means what he says about fiscal responsibility or are they all going to fall along the lines of Giuliani and his claim to running the most conservative administration in the last fifty years it New York City?  (Congratulations on being the skinniest kid at fat camp, Rudy).  Can any of the candidates throw me, and the millions upon millions of other voters like me, a bone?  If not, I doubt that I, along with many others, will be calling ourselves “Republicans” much longer.